When I worked as a teacher at a Saturday school for children who were struggling with English and maths, my pupils, all of whom were primary school age, had two emotions: They were “good” (break time) or they were “sad” (seven times table, spelling test).

Our boys aren't 'cross' because they cannot read - they are frustrated, humiliated, furious, but don't have the words to express their state of mind

A ten-year-old boy with a deepening voice and a bum-fluff moustache isn’t “cross” because he cannot read or add up or tell the time: He’s ashamed, desperate, humiliated, bitter and furious.

Furious with his teachers, with his parents, and with his own mute inability to tell anyone what this state of left-behind arrested infanthood feels like.

One boy, due to go up to secondary school in September, was still struggling with reading “dog” and “log”. Sad? I wanted to weep.

Teachers talk of a “word gap”. In a study published by Oxford University Press last month, 800 secondary school teachers described pupils with a limited vocabulary being held back not only in English but in history, geography and religious studies.

I like an emoji as much as the next snap-happy Insta-floozie but they have their limits. Part of growing up is grappling with your own unruly emotions, impulses and ambitions, and tempering your more selfish instincts to the equally unruly needs and feelings of others. You cannot successfully make that leap if you conceive states of mind only as gurning, ready-made cartoons.

My pupil who was going through agonies with the sodding dog on its godforsaken log, would be doing Oliver Twist the following year.

Heartbroken? Here’s a video of poor, lost Britney Spears sobbing on a chat show.

Then there’s the “This” phenomenon.

Seen a spectacular sunset, a sweeping landscape, a pink dawn? Post a photo hash-tagged #Thisiseverything.

Or just #This.

This #this business has dismal implications for travel, art and nature writing.

most read in opinion

Comment

TREVOR KAVANAGH

Next German leader could help salvage Therea May's battered Brexit

Comment

THE SUN SAYS

Tory rebels need to understand what losing is and not force a Brexit vote

Comment

DOMINIC RAAB

We’ve argued long enough — it’s time for some national self-belief on Brexit

Comment

TONY PARSONS

Cameron is a headless chicken who legged it — we're lucky to have Theresa May

Comment

JEREMY CLARKSON

It's madness that Prince Philip, 97, is still driving and law 'is a joke'

Comment

THE SUN ON SUNDAY SAYS

Calamity Corbyn is losing confidence of Labour voters over Brexit

What if John Ruskin, instead of labouring over his descriptions of the Doge’s Palace and San Marco in Venice, had instead taken a St Mark’s Square selfie and said simply: “#this . . . ” Something, surely, has been lost.

If you don’t read, if you don’t learn about lust, betrayal, fretful fears and vengeful instincts from literature and bother to acquire the words that go with them, then your growth, your becoming a fully fledged proper person, has in some awful, important way been stunted.
Tragic face.

Laura Freeman/The Spectator. This article appears in the current edition of The Spectator.